Just two children remain in foster care after the controversial sect’s botched escape attempt — among the last loose ends in the group's legal saga.

Members of the Lev Tahor ultra-orthodox Jewish community walk children home from classes in Chatham in February. Four more of the sect's children who had been in foster care will be reunited with their families.

Four more Lev Tahor children have been ordered to be reunited with their parents after they were placed in foster care following a botched attempt to flee the country contrary to a court order.

Just two children remain in foster care — their parents having successfully escaped to Guatemala — as the legal saga enveloping the controversial ultraorthodox Jewish sect seemingly draws to a close.

“At the end of the day, I think how all this is going to shake out, is that ultimately what is going to be left on the table after all of these allegations about abuse and neglect . . . is one fundamental problem which could never ever have been resolved and that is the mandatory curriculum in Quebec was fundamentally in opposition to the teachings (of their religion),” said Guidy Mamann, the Toronto-based immigration lawyer coordinating the group’s legal defence.

Quebec child protection authorities have documented allegations of abuse, underage marriage and a sub-standard education regime within the sect. Sect leaders have categorically refuted all allegations of abuse and insist that Lev Tahor is the victim of a smear campaign and its members are being targeted for their beliefs.

The group fled Quebec en masse in November, kicking off a months-long legal saga. A Quebec court ordered 14 children be removed to foster care and issued apprehension warrants for all of the other children in the community.

An Ontario judge first upheld the Quebec ruling, but placed a stay on his order to allow the families to appeal. The 14 children were found to have left the jurisdiction in March, on the day the appeal was scheduled to be heard. Six of them were stopped at the border in Trinidad and Tobago, while an additional two were found in Calgary. Six more remain in Guatemala with their parents.

All of the eight apprehended children were placed in foster care. Another judge, hearing the appeal, overturned the original decision, meaning the families were no longer subject to the Quebec order. Subsequent hearings have led to the release of six of the eight children taken into care.

The case for the remaining two, whose parents are still in Guatemala, will be heard May 29. Mamann says that other members of the community have offered to take the children in the absence of their parents.

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